Good morning. How are you all doing today?
Excellent. Well, it is a blessing to see all of you.
If you are joining us here at Hosanna for the first time in our sanctuary,
or if you're joining us online,
we want to say welcome to all of you.
We're so glad you're here to worship with us today.
I am Pastor Nathan,
and today we are going to be in Revelation chapter 6,
and we will be celebrating communion together as the body of Christ.
So if you're watching online,
get your communion emblems ready.
We will be doing that at the tail end of service.
Then just next week,
we'll be taking a break from Revelation to celebrate Mother's Day.
So I just encourage everybody to be praying for your moms if you're not praying for
your moms because moms need prayer and we love them.
So we're going to be celebrating moms next week.
But this morning, we are going to be looking at
the exciting topic of the beginning of the tribulation period,
the beginning of all that God is going to do,
specifically with the charge of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
In ancient and middle-aged times,
one of the most devastating tools of warfare was the cavalry charge.
If I say calvary through this at any time, forgive me.
I've been wrestling to say cavalry correctly as I've been preparing this study.
But really, a charge of mounted soldiers was
greatly feared because it was near unstoppable in ancient times.
The advantages of cavalry were improved mobility.
You could get around faster with horses,
greater height, and we understand Star Wars taught us the importance of the high ground.
So it's very important to have that.
Calvary had speed,
they had inertial mass when the weight of a horse could just charge through soldiers.
Then just the psychological impact of this thundering charge of hooves coming at you was huge.
The Mongolian Huns were famous for their mounted archers.
Over time, cavalry became increasingly armored to the point where you get to the Middle Ages,
eventually evolving into the mounted knights that we understand in the medieval period.
Calvary as a devastating tool of conquest just had
such dominance until the use of firearms and muskets and cannons
came upon the scene and became commonly used,
which then made the mounted armored cavalry largely ineffective.
But as time went on,
horses were eventually replaced with tanks.
But what's interesting is the term cavalry is still in use today to
describe tank units in many militaries around the world.
Now, Revelation 6 opens up with a devastating cavalry charge.
A devastating charge of four colored horses that are
representative of the opening four cataclysmic judgments that will come on the earth.
As I said, these four horsemen are commonly referred to as the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
What we're going to see this morning is a white horse,
a fiery red horse,
an ominous black horse,
and a pale green horse.
But what's really interesting is these four horsemen,
in addition to being the opening of the tribulation,
are in and of themselves like a trailer for the rest of the movie.
They're a trailer for the rest of Revelation.
They're a summary of all the details that are to
follow in the subsequent chapters all the way up through Chapter 19.
So these four horsemen and what they represent really are
a snapshot picture of the entire tribulation period that is to come upon the earth.
This cavalry charge will devastate the earth.
There's really no other way to put it.
It will devastate this planet.
This time that we're going to be studying and opening here with these four horsemen is not
just a tribulation, it is the tribulation.
The tribulation. There were dark ages in our history,
but these are going to be the darkest of ages.
There are troubled times in our history,
but these are going to be the toughest and most troubled for mankind on all of earth.
So this cataclysmic series of judgments that has come into the earth,
it's an important topic biblically.
It's written about in no less than 60 different places in the Bible.
In fact, there are only two other subjects that are talked
about more than the tribulation period.
Number one is salvation and number two is the second coming of Jesus Christ.
But in third place,
the third most talked about event of history in
Scripture is this great tribulation, this tribulation period.
In this time, as we'll see as we go through Scripture,
will be worse than anything that has ever happened on planet earth.
It's going to be worse than World War I,
worse than World War II,
it's going to be worse than the Holocaust,
it's going to be worse than the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
worse than the black plague that was in Europe in the 14th century.
It's going to be worse than the almost seven million worldwide deaths
in most recent time related to COVID.
It's going to be worse than the 500 million deaths from the 1918 Spanish flu.
All of this will pale in comparison to
the great devastation and what happens during the tribulation period.
In fact, the prophet Jeremiah said in Jeremiah chapter 30 verse 7,
how awful that day will be.
When he says day there, he's referring to a time period.
How awful that day will be,
there will be no other like it.
So as we move through the following chapters in the coming weeks,
we will see a progressively increasingly
intense movement of judgments as God pours out his wrath upon the earth.
All culminating though in the return of Jesus Christ,
Satan being bound and the millennial kingdom being established here on earth.
But it all starts here with these four horsemen giving us
an overview of everything that's to come.
But before we get to that this morning,
we do want to open in a time of worship.
We want to praise God because as we know his wrath is to come,
we know that he is a God of justice,
and we know that all of that is true and real.
We know scripturally how God feels about sin.
We still praise him for his will.
We still praise him for his judgment on sin,
and more importantly, we praise him for the salvation that is
available to all who call upon his name today.
We're so thankful that he has saved us. Amen. Let's pray.
Father God, Lord, we love you and we thank you Lord so much.
God, as we're studying through this revelation Lord,
let us not forget that this is ultimately a revelation of Jesus Christ.
Lord, all of this is about teaching us who you are,
your heart, your will, your ways Lord.
In God today as we start the lengthy revelation of what is to come Lord,
what you showed John from the perspective of heaven.
God, may we learn about you.
Specifically Lord, we are going to learn how seriously you take sin.
We're going to learn what it means when the Bible says the wages of sin is death.
Lord, we're going to learn what it means when we say God is a God of justice.
But Lord, today we are still in the time before these events,
and we still live in a time God where we have
the opportunity to call out to you before the wrath falls upon this earth Lord.
God, we are gathered here as your kids today in your house to study your word yes,
but to worship you and to praise your holy name,
to celebrate you God.
We're so thankful for the salvation that you've offered to us,
that you've granted to us through our faith in what you did on the cross,
and the fact that you rose from the dead Lord, we're so grateful.
But God, we are a people that are here in this earth today with a call to go out and to take
the gospel, to take the light of hope, to take the message of salvation to those that don't yet have it Lord.
And God, as we study these things that are to come Lord,
things that we're not going to be here for is the church.
Lord, let it still be a motivator to us to be busy about the gospel,
to be busy about sharing the truth, the hope of salvation with those that don't have it God.
Let us be people who go out and do the work of an evangelist in this world.
But God, we love you and we just want to praise you.
We want to start with just remembering who you are,
understanding that we are blessed for reading this book,
and remembering God that you are worthy, you are holy, you are God Almighty,
and we love you so much. It's in Jesus name we pray, Amen.
All right.
We are in Revelation chapter 6.
We're going to be looking at the first eight verses this morning,
but we'll start with reading the first two introducing our first writer.
It says, Then I saw the lamb open one of the seven seals,
and I heard one of the four living creatures say with a voice like thunder,
Come, I looked and there was a white horse.
Its rider held a bow,
a crown was given to him,
and he went out as a conqueror in order to conquer.
Now, so far as we've gone through chapters 4 and 5 of Revelation,
we know that we are in heaven at this point.
John has been caught up to heaven where he saw God on the throne.
He has seen these four strange living creatures.
He saw the 24 elders which represent the entirety of the saved body of Christ,
and they're from heaven watching.
They are now seeing the events of tribulation unfold on the earth below.
Now, as I said, John,
he saw Jesus, the lamb who was slaughtered,
step up in chapter 5 and to take the scroll from the right hand of the father who was sitting on the throne.
He was able to do that because Jesus is the only one worthy,
the only one that could fulfill the redemption clause.
We spoke about how there's a few different ideas and interpretations of what this scroll is,
and one of those ideas is that the scroll represented the title deed to earth,
that was given over to man in the beginning in the garden,
and then which man gave over to Satan when he traded
his dominion of the earth for the knowledge of good and evil as he ate from the tree.
Then we saw that in the history of title deeds in the Jewish culture,
that often there was a redemption clause that one could buy back a deed that was lost or sold or given away.
In this case, Jesus was the only one who qualified,
who was worthy to fulfill that redemption clause by shedding his blood on the cross,
and thus purchasing back all of creation,
purchasing back us who are in the earth as a part of creation,
and basically redeeming all of it.
So in doing all of that, he prevailed,
he conquered, and then bought all of it back from the curse of sin and death.
Now, he begins to break those seven seals that were on that scroll,
unleashing the judgment upon the earth.
Now, each of these seven seals that are on this scroll,
they're going to represent a judgment of God on the unbelieving earth.
Then the seventh seal, when it is broken,
that then ushers in the seven trumpet judgments,
which are declaring more increasingly worse judgments through this tribulation period.
The seventh trumpet, when it is sounded,
then ushers in the seven bold judgments,
which are then pictures of God then pouring out again,
increasingly worse judgments on the earth.
Now, some look at these seven seals,
seven trumpets, and seven bold judgments
as a retelling of the same seven events over and over and over.
That's one interpretation of this.
I personally disagree with that interpretation.
I do believe it is 21 successive movements as we go through these seven seals,
seven trumpets, and seven bolds.
But it all opens here with a rider on a white horse,
as Jesus opens the first seal.
The question obviously is, who is this rider?
Who is the rider on the white horse and what does it represent?
Well, typically, if you're a fan or you remember old Westerns,
and more specifically when they were colorized finally,
you would have these movies where there would be bad guys in the town,
and then the hero would ride in.
What color was the horse the hero was always on?
It was always a white horse, right?
Sometimes he had a white hat.
I was like, in the Old West and dust everywhere,
how do you keep a white hat clean?
But it was always clean, right?
It was just a sign of purity and heroism as this hero of the story would ride in,
the good guy on the white horse.
Many see the rider here on this white horse,
or at least some do, as Jesus.
I was studying this and just trying to get into the interpretations of this,
and there's quite a few people within the church that say,
this is Jesus, he's the rider because he's on a white horse,
and that's the picture that we see of Jesus,
but I'm here to tell you that it's not Jesus,
or I don't believe it's Jesus.
The rider that we see here on this white horse in the beginning of Revelation,
he's a counterfeit.
He's a counterfeit Jesus.
If you and I were to try and make a counterfeit $20 bill,
you would make it look as much like the authentic $20 bill is possible.
That's how counterfeit money works.
We wouldn't put somebody else's face on it and try and pass it off as a real bill
because people would look at it and go, no, that's not Andrew Jackson.
It's a fake.
This counterfeit that we see here is this white horse.
This first rider is such a good counterfeit that even in today's times,
there are some who have been fooled right out the gate as the identity of this rider,
and then that is something that is going to happen when he actually comes,
that people will be fooled, completely fooled as the identity of this rider.
Now, again, some think it's Jesus because there is a connection to this white horse.
If you go to Revelation chapter 19, which is the second coming of Jesus Christ,
it tells us there that Jesus comes on a white horse.
And so they go, white horse, white horse must be Jesus.
Okay?
But this can't be Jesus for a number of reasons that I want to share with you.
Scripturally, although Jesus does come on a white horse, in Revelation chapter 19,
Jesus comes at the end of tribulation.
We are here at the beginning of tribulation.
When Jesus comes at the end of tribulation during his second coming,
he comes to end warfare, to end the bloodshed and the carnage that has taken place
on the earth and had been taking place on the earth.
But this rider who's coming at the beginning of tribulation,
as we're going to see this morning, ushers in warfare, ushers in carnage and devastation.
Additionally, if you go to Revelation chapter 19 and you read about the coming of Christ,
it says that Jesus is returning on a white horse with many crowns on his head, many crowns.
Now, the word for crown there in Revelation 19 is the Greek word diatomata.
That word means a permanent crown that a king would wear.
It's the permanent sign of authority and it signifies ultimate authority.
So Jesus comes with the many diatomatas, the many permanent crowns
that represent his complete authority over everything.
Here in Revelation chapter 6, it tells us that the rider has a crown that was given to him,
but the word for crown is a different Greek word.
It's the Greek word Stefanos, which refers to the victory wreath
that you would commonly see victors at the Olympic Games get, right?
They would get this crown, but it was a victory wreath, but more importantly,
it was a temporary crown, not a permanent crown, very different.
And so the picture here is this rider that is coming in as the first seal is open,
has a crown of victory, but it's a temporary victory that he will have.
In Revelation 19, Jesus returns on the white horse with many crowns
and it says he returns with a sword.
Here, this rider on this white horse returns with a bow.
And biblically throughout scripture, a bow is often seen as a symbol of the hunt
or the symbol of the hunter.
For example, in Genesis chapter 10 is the first time we see the idea of a hunter
or someone connected to the hunt in the name Nimrod,
this man Nimrod who the Bible calls a great hunter.
That word hunter in the original language there literally means bozeman,
so he's a great archer, okay?
And this was the man Nimrod who established Babel, which became Babylon.
A lot of people look at Nimrod as the first dictator of the world,
the first one to stand up and try and rally the entire world against God
and to lead others to rally against God as well.
And so the bow of this rider connects the idea of this rider to the idea of Nimrod,
a worldwide dictator that's going to come and lead people in a rebellion against God.
Then in Ephesians chapter 6 verse 16, we read as Paul wrote,
in every situation we're called to take up the shield of faith
with which you can distinguish all the flaming arrows of who?
The evil one, the flaming arrows of the evil one.
And you go, well, where are arrows fired from?
They're fired from a bow typically, right?
And so a bow here and the one who fires the bow here in Ephesians chapter 6 is evil six,
is the evil one.
And so you put all this together.
It gives us a picture of like who is this rider on this white horse in Revelation 6?
It's not Jesus.
The rider is the antichrist, the counterfeit Christ,
the one who looks just like Jesus but isn't Jesus at all,
the one who's going to come in the name of peace,
but is who's going to bring warfare and bloodshed and destruction
through the tribulation period,
the one who's going to come claiming to be the one, but he is a counterfeit.
He is a very clever imitation and imposter pretending to be Jesus.
Now, one of the details I want us to note here,
and this gets into a little bit of biblical symbology,
is you'll notice this rider has a bow, but he doesn't have any arrows.
It doesn't say he comes in with any arrows.
Very often, if you go through scripture and you do kind of an overview of bow in scriptures,
one, you're going to get bow a thousand times.
So it's going to be a long study, okay?
But once you comb through and get all the bows out,
you find bow. Every time it lists bow, or most often when it lists bow,
it always says bow and arrow, bow and arrow.
And they had a bow and arrow, and they stocked up on bows and arrows.
And so you always see bows and arrows together,
but here in this particular instance, the rider has a bow,
but it doesn't indicate any arrows.
Now, symbolically, that suggests that this first rider who's coming in to conquer,
it says, is going to do so not by initially, at least, not by military conquest,
but by other means.
And the picture here of that white horse and the hero and him pretending or masquerading
as the Messiah or the one to come is that he rides in initially in peace,
to bring peace, but it's a false and temporary peace.
He's given this crown by the people of earth because he's the one that comes in
and solves all of earth's problems.
He is the one that even is able to get peace between the Jews and the Arabs
in the Middle East, and he is the one that covenants with Israel
and allows Israel to rebuild their temple on the Temple Mount,
which has been an impossibility.
And still to this day, people are like, we're not sure how that's going to be possible
because the Muslims have one of their mosques right up there on the Temple Mount.
But this rider is going to come in riding in peace and bring peace, and guess what?
Everybody is going to go, the hero on the white horse has arrived.
He has arrived, and his conquering is going to be a conquering of peace,
or everybody's going to be like, yeah, let him take over.
Let him rule.
And like I said, he has given that crown there, which is representing the authority
here on earth, but it's a Stefanos.
It's a temporary crown.
It's a temporary rulership that he has given.
But when you do a whole overview, and we don't have time this morning to do all that,
but to look at all of what scripture has to say about this man, the Antichrist,
what you see is a picture of someone who is the ultimate wolf in sheep's clothing,
the ultimate counterfeit.
Or to put it in terms of modern social media, the Antichrist is all Photoshop and filters.
OK, he is going to manage to build this temporary peace on earth.
Like I said, even between the Arabs and the Jews, which everybody's like,
that's impossible.
And in the middle of this seven-year tribulation period, as we'll see,
he's going to break the covenant he makes with Israel.
He's going to go and stand in their temple and say, I am God, worship me.
His mask is going to come off.
He's going to be seen as the bad guy he is, the imposter he is,
and he's going to demand that he is the true one.
He is God in the flesh.
He is the one to be worshiped.
So the Bible talks about, in many different places,
and specifically in 1 John, about precursor Antichrists
that are going to come throughout history.
These pictures of what the Antichrist is going to look like,
but they're precursor images.
And we've seen many of them over time as people have come in and trying to take over world domination
to try and conquer everything, thinking that they're going to be the answer
and bring all the peace.
One of those is in our recent history, about a half century ago,
by a man named Hitler.
And you might think, Hitler, all we know about Hitler
is that he was devastating, right?
That he was a murderer.
But when he started his rise to power, most of the Western powers,
especially the French and the British, thought he was the hero of the day.
They thought he was the one that was going to come and bring peace to the world
and solve all the world's problems.
In fact, the Britain Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain,
actually signed a peace treaty with him initially
because they thought he's a man of peace.
He's a man of peace that's going to fix and solve everything.
And so he signed a peace treaty with him.
But there was this other man there in Britain named Winston Churchill
who said, don't trust that guy.
Don't trust him.
He's a wolf in sheep's clothing.
And unfortunately, by the time anybody could figure that out,
the entire world was plunged into war.
He was a precursor, a picture.
And that whole coming in peace and then plunging the world into war,
the same is going to happen in the tribulation period,
but in a much greater capacity.
In fact, in 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 3, it says this,
when they say peace and security, then sudden destruction will come upon them
like labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.
When the world says everything is finally figured out,
peace has arrived, we did it.
Our hero is here.
He's at the top.
He's running everything.
We're good.
Then sudden destruction will come upon them.
And then it says they will not escape.
That's an interesting phrase.
You might think, well, why won't they escape?
Well, one, because it's God's judgment being released upon them.
It's God's judgment.
But two, this writer has backup.
This writer has a posse that is writing with him.
It's not just a writer.
It's a cavalry charge.
And it's not the hero who is riding into town to save the day,
but it's a cavalry charge led by a false peace,
but really with the intent to kill and destroy.
And as it says, he went out as a conqueror in order to conquer.
And so that brings us to verse 3.
It says, when he opened the second seal,
I heard the second living creature say, come.
Then another horse went out, a fiery red one.
And its rider was allowed to take peace from the earth
so that people would slaughter one another and a large sword was given to him.
So the peace, the false peace that this first rider brings in,
it doesn't last.
It doesn't last.
In its place comes devastation, the devastation of warfare
that is represented by this dramatic vision of this fiery red horse.
The color red is often associated throughout the Bible with carnage,
with terrorism.
You see that connection a lot.
In Revelation chapter 12, we're going to see the red dragon.
In Revelation chapter 17, we're going to see the red beast.
You see this color red that is associated.
And we know that today in color theory.
People say, don't paint your room red because it's just
going to make you angry when you sit in it.
And there's some studies that back that up as colors can affect us
and red can be a color when it's the predominant thing that causes people
to get upset and get angry and they don't know why and get out
of the red room, right?
But just like Hitler promised peace and then plunged the world into war,
the Antichrist is going to do the same.
But it's going to be in a much greater way.
He's going to promise peace.
But then we see here as represented by this fiery red horse
that he will then take peace from the earth and bring war and bring slaughter.
Now it describes how that happens here with this picture of this large sword.
It says, a large sword was given to him.
So again, remember the first rider came in and representing the work
of the Antichrist entering into the world came with a bow and no arrows, right?
But now in the place of that bow is a large sword, which is just understood
to be an implement of destruction, an implement of warfare,
and the sword is taken up.
But it's interesting the words there, large sword, because we might think,
oh, big sword, right?
Large, right?
It's referring to a big sword.
But that's not what that word large means.
It's not referring to the size of the sword.
Large is referring to the fact that the sword is remarkable in degree or effect.
All right?
So in other translations, it says a great sword, right?
That it has a big effect when it's brought into the world.
And then that word sword itself is referring specifically
to a short stabbing sword that Roman soldiers used.
So it wasn't like, you know, you think great sword, right?
You know, Braveheart and Mel Gibson as William Wallace, right?
It's not this giant sword.
It's a short stabbing sword that has great effect.
Now, although this short stabbing sword was primarily used by Roman soldiers,
it was also a sword that was a favorite of assassins because it was easy to conceal.
It was a short sword that was easy to hide.
And so possibly speaking of the Antichrist as he comes in with all smiles saying,
peace, peace, all is good.
And then right when we're going, yes, everything is wonderful.
We love him.
It's just like, aha, stabby stabby.
And then he brings war into the earth, right?
So peace vanishes from the earth as war comes upon it.
Now, some people object, or at least I read that some object to war being a sign
of the end times, right?
Because they're like, we've always had war, right?
War has existed since man has existed.
You know, it's like, how is this a sign of the end times?
You know, the Norwegian Academy of Sciences said that since 3600 BC
until today, there have been 14,531 wars and only 292 years of peace.
That's 2.6 wars per year, one year of peace out of every 20 years.
Or to break it down, it's 36 hours of peace every month of man's history or one minute
of peace for every four hours of war across the entire history of mankind.
We like to fight.
We like to dominate.
We like to get our way.
And without Christ, that comes with hurting others and taking from others
and devastating others.
But the point here in Revelation with this large sword is that it's going to be sudden,
it's going to be unexpected, and it's going to be much,
much worse than anything we have ever seen.
And it will cultivate in what will be called the mother of all battles known
as the Battle of Armageddon, and we'll get to that in Revelation chapter 16.
So we see a man of peace will come, temporarily solve all the world's problems,
temporarily have the authority over all the earth, but quickly will put down this bow
and this large sword is taken up, this warfare,
this great warfare will ensue on a scale never seen.
And what a terrible vision John is seeing from heaven.
Incidentally, he's not there for it.
He's in heaven watching this unfold.
But what a terrible thing to see come upon the earth.
This white horse, this counterfeit Jesus bringing in false peace
and deceiving everyone, and then followed by this red horse, which is war
and devastation and people killing one another, and then we get to verse 5.
When he opened the third seal, I heard the living creature say, come.
And I looked and there was a black horse.
Its rider had a set of scales in his hand.
Then I heard something like a voice among the four creatures say,
a quart of wheat for a denarius and three quarts of barley for a denarius,
but do not harm the oil and the wine.
Now, we read stuff like that and we're like, what does that mean?
Like, what are you talking about, right?
But again, we're seeing these things represent things
to come throughout the tribulation period.
Now, the first thing I want to notice is this is the third time
that the living creature has said to John, come, right?
That word come literally means to step up or approach to see, all right?
Now, this isn't scriptural.
I'm just the picture in my head is that like, hey, look,
look what's happening down on earth and like step up and look, right?
See what's going on.
And perhaps John just was stepping away, horrified by what he was seeing
come upon the earth.
And as we get into the details of it, yeah, it is horrific what is to come.
But still he steps up and then he sees this black horse, it says,
and it's rider holding a set of scales.
That set of scales there is the picture of scales used for weighing things.
There are scales used for measuring, weighing, rationing.
They were typically used in these times as a means of calculating
the worth of things, right?
You wanted to buy this, you would set it on this side of the scale
and then you put what you were paying for it on this side.
And when those things balanced out, it was a fair deal.
It's the idea of commerce.
But then his voice gets into this interesting phrase about the cost of wheat
and the cost of barley, right?
What does that have to do with these scales?
Well, this all represents a picture of what really is the result of war.
And that is famine.
That is scarcity.
That is the lack of necessary resources, necessary sustenance.
This is what he's picturing here because when he shows this scale,
he's holding a scale in his hands and then he starts to say,
this is how much food is going to cost, right?
And that's the idea of a quart of wheat.
A quart of wheat, according to Greek historian Herodotus,
was the daily allotment for a single soldier in warfare.
So when a soldier would go out to war, a quart of wheat
is what he needed to stay nourished, to stay healthy,
to stay strong and vibrant.
That was the idea.
It was, incidentally, the bare minimum to keep someone healthy
and active on the battlefield.
And then this phrase, three quarts of barley.
Barley was like a lower nutrition food, right?
Like where wheat might have been the steak,
barley was the cup of noodles, OK?
It was what college students lived on, right?
It was the low quality food.
Now, barley in those times was typically something
that was fed to the animals instead of people
because it was more affordable.
And of course, there was like, oh, yeah, the people
are going to get the good stuff.
Animals will give the less quality food.
And then he says a denarius there.
And a denarius or denarius, depending
on how you pronounce it, is simply one whole day's wage
for a common worker, OK?
So when you put this together, I heard something like a voice
say, a quart of wheat for a denarius.
One whole day's necessary sustenance
will cost one whole day's earning.
Or three quarts of barley for a denarius.
OK, even the lower quality nutrition food
is still going to require a whole day's worth of earning.
And the idea here is that as a result of this war that
is going to come upon globally the Earth,
that people will have to spend every single penny they have
just to find something to eat to be healthy,
just to get enough food to sustain themselves.
That they're going to have to spend everything they got just
to get the basic necessities of living.
This is what's going to come upon the Earth
in the conditions.
Now, as I said, famine and scarcity,
it's one of the biggest results of warfare.
We've seen that throughout history,
wherever there is a war.
There's always instantly a shortage of food
that follows as food supplies are destroyed,
as food is taken by those that are fighting
to keep their troops fed.
And the people are the ones that end up suffering from this.
On top of that, during war you have commerce
and transportation of good is affected.
Livestock gets killed, right?
And so it gets difficult for people
just to get the basic amount of food they need to survive.
Most recently, we've seen this happening in Ukraine.
As the war has devastated the country
and devastated the cities and devastated just
the basic needs that people have that they've
been fleeing to the border.
Earlier last year, we partnered with far reaching ministries
because they have boots on the ground
where there's millions and millions and millions of people
fleeing to the borders just trying
to get clean water to drink.
And just trying to get enough food to feed them
or their children.
And so it's devastating what takes place there but not new.
We've seen it throughout the history of man.
But the hunger that he's talking about here,
the hunger, the scale of the hunger
is something that I don't think most of us
have ever really experienced.
Most of us, I don't believe, have ever
experienced what it means to be really, really hungry.
Today, there are some 800 million people
worldwide that are classified as chronically malnourished.
Which means they don't have a quart of wheat.
They don't have enough food to just maintain
the bare minimum of a healthy living
when it comes to keeping the food that they
need in their system.
And that's a lot of people, 800 million worldwide.
But during tribulation, it's going to be much worse.
Much, much worse globally.
And with worldwide war on a scale we've never seen,
possibly nuclear weapons unleashed
in this type of scenario, destroying, contaminating
food supplies worldwide, food's going to get scarce.
And that's going to cause inflation
due to supply and demand.
And unfortunately, no matter how much
we try during that time, we're not
going to be able to look at it and go, no, there's
no inflation.
We're not going to be able to go, no, let's redefine
the word inflation to not call it inflation.
It's going to be so real and so prevalent and so pervasive
that nobody could deny what has taken place.
And all of it will result in a struggle for people
to meet even their own basic survival needs.
But then he says this interesting phrase,
do not harm the oil and wine.
Well, oil and wine, biblically, are idioms for wealth
or for the wealthy, for the rich.
They also refer to things that aren't necessities.
They would be considered luxuries of the time,
not essential basic needs.
And so the idea of here's how expensive basic food is going
to cost, here's how expensive that all is going to be.
The luxuries not being harmed could
mean that the rich, the wealthy, aren't
going to be as affected as much as the middle class
and the poor will be, which is also
something that is very common in times of famine and scarcity.
But more importantly is during this time
where food stores are being destroyed
and the church not being there, you
think about the picture where there's not
going to be these Christian organizations like Feed
the Children still trying to gather food
and get it to the hungry.
They're going to be gone.
The church has been raptured at this point.
There's not going to be organizations like Samaritan's
Purse around that's going to step in with all
this benevolence to help.
All of that is going to be out of the world at this point.
And so war, famine, hunger, malnourishment, all of this
is just going to be great.
And then it's going to lead to the final rider, which
is disease and sickness in verse 7.
It says, when he opened the fourth seal,
I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, come.
And I looked and there was a pale green horse.
Its rider was named Death and Hades was following after him.
They were given authority over a fourth of the earth
to kill by the sword, by famine, by plague,
and by the wild animals of the earth.
And so this fourth rider is described riding
on this pale green horse.
It's interesting.
You're like pale green.
What is that?
It's a yellowish, greenish, gray is the best understanding of it.
So I'll put it in modern terminology.
We'll all instantly understand.
Zombie skin.
That's the picture, that dead skin
that we see in movies that have zombies and stuff.
It's just this picture of death and decay.
But this is this pale green horse.
And this rider, it says on this horse, is named Death.
But he's not alone.
He's followed by Hades.
And so some look at that and go, hey, there's a fifth horse.
That's just not described here.
Now, whether there's a fifth horse
or whether they're just together on the horse,
it doesn't tell us.
But the idea of death here, it says
the rider on this pale green horse, his name was Death.
And the word used for death there
is referring to the event of physically dying, personified.
Does that make sense?
It's giving a personification to this event.
This event of physically dying is now personified as a rider.
And then it says, Hades follows after him.
And that word for Hades is the place where the dead go
or where the dead are.
We would commonly use the word hell to refer to this.
And so again, Hades is personified as a rider.
But what it's telling us is death and hell ride together
during the tribulation.
Death and hell are present readily
throughout the tribulation here.
And it says they're given authority.
That word authority means it's given the absolute right
to take a quarter of the population of Earth to kill them.
Now the fact that Hades is used here,
that death, the event of dying is coming,
and that Hades is following with him,
which is the picture of hell,
it's the idea that the quarter of the population
of the Earth that dies here as a result of all of this
are those who've rejected Christ, who aren't saved,
who haven't received the gift of salvation
because hell is riding with death.
Now all four of these horses, as I said,
they're a collective, somewhat chronological summary
of what is taking place during the tribulation.
And so when it says that they're given authority
over a fourth of the Earth to kill by the sword,
kill by the sword is corresponding to what comes
from the red horse of war, right?
The devastation of warfare.
And then it says they're given authority to kill by famine,
and that corresponds to the death
that comes from this black horse,
as represented by the black horse of famine and scarcity.
But then you have these last two descriptions,
which are interesting, to kill by plague,
and to kill by the wild animals of the Earth.
It could mean a couple different things.
The word plague there simply means death,
physical death by illness of some kind, disease, right?
As I said, we've seen that over the history of the Earth
with the black plague, and then we have the Spanish flu.
Most recently we had COVID that just killed so many people,
but plague and illness and sickness,
it's just another natural byproduct of warfare.
A Red One scholar said this, historically,
as a country is engulfed in war,
the able-bodied men are the ones who take up arms.
Farmers leave their fields,
and food supplies then become scarce.
Soon there is malnutrition followed by disease.
Ultimately, the wild beasts prey upon the weakened people.
Historians tell us that more people died of epidemics
of influenza and typhoid after World War I
than those who actually died in the war itself.
So it could be referring to these types of things,
but there's an interesting alternate theory
of what he means by wild animals.
Is it just wild animals, you know,
I can't think of the word,
coming after people who are weak?
I'll use that.
I can't think of the other word I was gonna say.
But another theory here where they talk about killing
with plague and wild animals is some people think
that these wild animals could be referring
to the most devastating creature on Earth,
and that's rats.
Why?
Rats carry disease, and they carry disease of all kinds.
And rats are prolific in any population center on Earth
where people live, rats live.
And rats carry all these diseases,
and as I mentioned earlier, you know,
we've had precursors throughout history,
and this is just speculative on my part,
but we've had precursors of Antichrist throughout history.
I believe we've had precursors of the type of sickness
and plague that is gonna come upon the Earth
during this tribulation period.
And one of those precursors, I think,
was the Black Plague or the Black Death
in 14th century Europe.
Because what's really interesting about the Black Plague,
which was primarily spread by rats carrying this disease,
is that it killed one fourth of the population of Europe.
Just an interesting detail and connection there.
Speculative, I know, but just an interesting thing
to think about.
But today's population on planet Earth
is just over eight billion people.
So if a fourth of eight billion was to die
in a matter of years, that would be two billion people.
Can you imagine two billion people dying in a matter of
what'll be months and years in the tribulation period?
That's insane.
That's a lot of people.
I mean, over the last few years with COVID,
worldwide deaths related to COVID right now
are about seven million, and people go,
man, that's mind boggling, right?
Seven million.
But what about two billion people losing their lives
through sickness, through malnourishment,
through hunger, through war, through sickness and disease?
That's just insane to think about, but it's gonna happen.
It's gonna happen during the tribulation period.
And so these four horsemen, as I said,
they're kind of a bird's eye snapshot of the horrors
that are gonna take place as God pours out
His judgment on the Earth.
And you might have come to church this morning
expecting to be encouraged,
and all you got was like, dun, dun, dun.
Right, you're like, wow, is that why I came to church?
Why would I teach a message like this, some might ask.
Well, first, the reason I teach a message like this
is because it was next.
We cover the entire Bible here at Hosanna.
We go verse by verse from Genesis
all the way through Revelation,
and we teach every verse of the Bible.
And so we're teaching this because it's next, right?
But more importantly, it's real.
More importantly, it's going to happen.
And just like all the other predictions and prophecies
in the Bible that were spoken before they happened
and then happened just as they were said,
so will this stuff.
Now we've seen these precursors I've been talking about,
these rumblings, these examples of what this stuff
is gonna look like as it unfolds.
I mean, you think about it, just 100 years ago,
who would have imagined that we would have weapons
of warfare that can wipe out billions of people
in a blink of an eye?
That was just an impossible thought.
And now today, the power of nukes that we have today
just dwarf the power of those that were dropped
on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
And then most recently, the world's done a great job
at reducing, I was looking it up,
I think it was in the mid-80s,
was the peak of how many nuclear warheads
existed in the world.
It was like some 70,000 across all the different countries
that had them.
I'm like, dang, that's a lot of nukes, right?
And then of course, peace treaties
and nonproliferation treaties and stuff,
and we've reduced stockpiles.
And so today, there's about 12,000 nuclear warheads
that exist in the world.
And of course, the United States and Russia
have most of them, right?
And you still go, dang, that's a lot of nukes.
But then you go, okay, but this many of them are in storage.
And so there's all these reduced numbers.
But so what?
One of them could wipe out billions.
One of them could wipe out populations,
and as things have been reducing over the years,
and okay, great, yeah, right, we're finally getting it,
Earth's getting their head on right, let's not launch nukes.
And then last year, when the war in Ukraine broke out,
what was everybody worried about?
Did they have nuclear weapons?
Is Russia trying to get them?
Then you have Putin going, hey, Western countries
don't get involved because I will unleash hell on you guys.
And people are like, oh no, oh no, right?
And then all of a sudden,
we're worried about nuclear war again.
And then you got terrorists running around,
and people talk about dirty bombs and suitcase nukes
and all this stuff, and it's like,
do we really think we have a control on what could happen?
And then like I said, we just went through a pandemic
that affected millions worldwide,
and we're currently going through economic difficulties
that are making it harder and harder for people
to just survive, let alone have luxuries, right?
It's like, cup of noodles isn't just college food anymore
for a lot of people.
It's, you know, Pastor Rick, man,
he gets gourmet with cup of noodles, right?
It's like, let's make it fancy, you know?
But the idea here is all of this
that is happening in our world around us,
it's just a foreshadowing of something worse
that is to come.
Now, I will say very pointedly
that I'm not big on conjecture, right?
I'm not big on, you know, oh my gosh,
this scientific advancement, is that the mark,
and is this the sign, right?
Because we don't know.
And when people get caught up in all this conjecture
about what could be, is that the Antichrist,
is that the sign, is that the mark?
You know, all we end up doing is fighting
and dividing over these things
when we should be united preaching the gospel
so that people come to know Jesus now, right?
And so, I don't necessarily like, you know,
looking at things in the world today and going,
oh, this might be it, and this might be it,
and if you're into that, great, have fun.
And I do understand that there's different views
on the events of the tribulation period,
but I do believe that scripture shows us,
I believe that scripture shows us
that those who have put their faith in Jesus Christ
as their Lord and Savior will be caught up into heaven
before these events take place.
I believe that.
Now, I do know there's disagreement on that,
but you know, I see here in Revelation
that as John is in heaven with the 24 elders
who represent the whole church,
the entirety of the redeemed,
they're observing these things unfold from heaven.
Somebody said to me yesterday, it's like,
yeah, the church has the best seats in the house,
and I'm like, whoa, I don't know
that we want those seats, right?
What we're watching happen is devastating,
but yeah, we're watching this unfold from heaven,
and then of course, we're gonna be the ones
that return with Christ at the conclusion of all of this
where he will end it and establish his kingdom.
But if we're not gonna be here for it,
you might go, why study it?
Like, why do we care?
Why do we care if we're not gonna be here?
Why spend time going through it?
Well, one, as I've been reminded numerous times recently,
because you go back to chapter one of Revelation
and said blessed is he who reads the words of this prophecy.
So we're gonna read it and study it,
whether we're here for it or not,
because we are blessed by doing so.
God blesses his people by reading the words
of this prophecy.
But also, I believe it's to learn the gravity
of how serious God takes sin.
To learn the gravity of how God is gonna respond
to mankind's rejection of him.
And as I said in the opening, to really learn what it means.
I mean, we're gonna see in all of this a picture
of what the wages of sin is death means.
We're gonna see a picture of what it means
when we say God is just or God is a God of justice,
because the judgment he has poured out on the earth
is going to be completely just and completely right.
And so there's that.
But I believe we study these things
because it's also to light a fire of urgency
in our lives as Christians to get to doing the work
we are called to do now.
We are called as God's people to be the light on the hill.
To proclaim the gospel.
To preach hope to those that don't have it.
To bring the message of salvation
to those that need it so badly.
We're called to do that.
To see those who don't know Jesus Christ as their savior
come to know him as savior.
And to be saved from the wrath to come
on those who reject him.
That's why I think we have this here.
To read it, to study it, to know it.
Because God's desire, the Bible tells us,
for his kids is not wrath,
but it's to obtain salvation.
And so, yeah, we can get caught up in the details
of the tribulation period.
We can get consumed in conjecture.
We could get caught up in speculation on this or that.
We can let ourselves get into arguments
over the timing of the rapture
and the interpretation of revelation.
Are we in the tribulation already?
Is it to come still?
All this stuff.
But my goal as your pastor here at Hosanna
is to teach what I see in scripture,
to teach what I believe scripture is saying.
And ultimately, when it comes to a lot of this,
I do fully recognize that we're not gonna know, really,
until it happens.
That's one of the things about prophecy, right?
It was like, we think it could be this,
we think it could be this.
Well, guess what?
We'll know when we get there.
I personally believe in a pre-tribulation rapture.
I know many like, no, I think it's mid,
I think it's post.
Guess what?
We'll know when it happens.
But how about today you and I lock arms
and preach the gospel to see people get saved?
I do believe the tribulation is future.
I do believe it's a definite seven-year period
of time in Earth's history.
And I do believe that those who put their faith in Christ
won't be here for it.
But regardless, we study things like the Antichrist
so that we know more clearly the authentic, right?
That's how people start to learn the real and the counterfeit.
When people that are becoming experts in counterfeit,
in identifying counterfeits,
what they do is they look towards the real thing.
They look towards the real thing.
They become an expert in the real thing
so that then they could recognize the counterfeit
when it presents itself.
And although we're gonna be studying things
about the Antichrist and tribulation and all of that,
we are not to be people looking for the Antichrist.
We are to be people looking for the return
of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
To be eagerly waiting His appearing,
to be people who love His appearing.
Not to get caught up, is that the mark?
Is that the mark?
The mark's gonna be something,
but we're not gonna be here for it.
What we are to be looking forward to
is Jesus and His return.
And God has the future under control.
We don't have to look at the future
as His kids with fear.
Yes, things are scary.
Yes, things are scary now.
Yes, they're gonna get even worse then.
But God has it all under control
because He is sovereign.
He is God Almighty.
And for those of you that don't know Jesus Christ
as your Lord and Savior today,
if you're sitting in this room
and you've never accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior,
if you're watching online
and you've never accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior,
I'm telling you this,
the time is coming where God is going to judge the earth
for its rejection of Him.
Where God is going to judge the earth
and purge the earth for its rebellion.
And that is all gonna come through a false Christ,
an anti-Christ, a world leader
who's gonna come on the scene
and he's gonna trick everybody
who doesn't know the difference.
And they're gonna think He's the hero,
but He is not because the anti-Christ is a liar.
He is a deceiver.
He promises peace, but He delivers war.
But the authentic Jesus Christ,
He's called faithful and true.
He is the one who is called the Prince of Peace
and He promises peace
and He truly delivers lasting peace.
The anti-Christ not only brings war,
but famine and death.
Jesus said, I am the bread of life.
Whoever comes to me will never hunger.
The anti-Christ will be everything
that the unsaved and the unrighteous want.
But Jesus Christ is everything we need.
He is everything we need and you do need Him
and we need Him.
And I'm gonna give you an opportunity right now
to receive Him as your Lord and Savior
if you don't know Jesus.
After, we're gonna celebrate communion together as a body,
but please pray with me right now.
Father God, we pray for any in this room this morning,
whether they're here physically with us
or watching us online, God,
that don't know You as their Lord and Savior.
God, they have never taken that step, Lord,
to receive You, to put their faith in You, Lord,
to confess the truth that they believe You are God,
that You died on the cross for them,
to pay the price for their sin, God,
that even You were a precursor
of what's gonna take place on earth, Lord,
as the entire wrath of God was poured out on You
on the cross for our sin.
Lord, there may be some here today
that have never put their faith in that
and because of that have never received salvation.
And so while we're praying with heads bowed and eyes closed,
if you wanna receive Jesus this morning,
we are still in the time of grace, the church age,
prior to the wrath and this judgment
being poured out on earth
and you have an opportunity today to be saved,
to be forgiven, to be transformed and set free.
And so if you're sitting in this room
and you wanna receive Jesus this morning,
just raise your hand where I can see it
and let me pray with you.
God bless you on the side.
Anybody else?
I see you too.
Anybody else in the back?
I see you too.
God is speaking to you this morning.
You need Christ.
You need salvation and He is offering it to you
freely this morning because He loves you so much.
If you haven't raised your hand yet
and you wanna receive Jesus this morning,
just do so, let me see it so I can pray with you.
If you're online, obviously I can't see you,
but let us know in chat.
Just type in a quick message,
I wanna receive Jesus this morning.
Anybody else in this room?
God is speaking to you right now.
All right, those of you that raised your hand,
I want you to pray with me if you're online
and you're receiving Jesus this morning,
I want you to pray with me right now.
Just say, Father God,
I believe in you.
I believe you are God.
I believe you came to this earth.
I believe you died for me on the cross.
I believe you died for me to pay the price for my sin.
I believe in what you say.
I believe that I deserved judgment.
I deserve judgment.
But God, I cry out to you for salvation.
Forgive me of all of my sin.
Come into my life.
Be my Lord, be my Savior.
Be my Master, be my friend.
Teach me how to live in a way that glorifies you.
Thank you for saving me from the wrath to come.
Help me to tell others about you,
that they may be saved as well.
Fill me with your Holy Spirit, Lord.
Empower me to serve you.
In Jesus' name I pray, amen.
Well, God bless you guys.
So those of you that received Christ this morning
here in the room, we have some,
we call them new believers packets up here,
and it's really just a set of tools
to encourage you on this walk,
this relationship that you started with Jesus, right?
It's about getting into the word and reading and do that.
It's about worshiping God, it's about telling people
what God has done in your life.
And so we have these packets up here.
Please don't leave here today,
either up front or out in the foyer.
If you're online and you gave your life
to Christ this morning, let us know in chat
and we will mail you one of these packets
because we wanna be here and walk with you
through this journey you're on.
You have been saved, you have been forgiven.
The Bible tells us that the entire host of heaven
are celebrating right now because your soul has been saved.
Hallelujah, that is glorious.
And so welcome to the family of God.
And so we're gonna close today,
and those of you that received Christ today,
you get to participate in this with us.
We're gonna celebrate communion.
And we wanna close today with this because in communion,
it's us fixing our eyes on Jesus.
It's us focusing on Jesus, not the antichrist,
not this, not the other things.
It's us fixing our eyes on who he is.
You know, because he's the one that made the way
to be right with God.
We recognize that, we remember that.
He's the one that made the way for our sin to be forgiven,
and communion is a time where we remember that.
He's the one that made the way to obtain salvation
and not the wrath of God.
And communion is where we as the body of Christ
get to celebrate that, to remember that together
as we eagerly await his coming.
And so when Jesus originally took the bread, right,
oh, actually, let me explain these cups to you.
If you're new in here, you should have one of these cups.
Okay, if you don't, please raise your hand
real nice and high right now,
and our elders will get you one real quick.
Keep it up until you have a cup in your hand.
Okay, great.
All right, over here on the side as well.
There is a tray right behind you right there
if you wanna grab to that gold tray.
Awesome, all right.
So those of you that have this,
there's a thick plastic tab on the end,
and above that tab is a very thin plastic tab.
If you pull back that thin plastic tab,
what it's gonna do is reveal the bread here
at the top of this communion cup.
And so when Jesus took this bread
when he was with his disciples on that last night,
he gave thanks, it tells us,
and it says he broke the bread,
and he said, this is my body, which is given for you.
You see, the horror, the devastation
that we see on the cross and what Jesus went through,
that was the wrath of God being poured out on sin.
Now Jesus was one without sin,
but the Bible tells us he became sin for us,
that he literally became your sin and my sin,
so that God, being a God of justice,
could pour out his justice and his wrath on that sin.
You see, it wouldn't be fair if God said,
here's my rules, and you do this, you get into heaven,
and you don't do that, you don't get into heaven,
and if he set all that up that way
and was like, okay, here it is,
and then we broke all the rules,
and he went, ah, you can come in anyway,
you can come in anyways.
How would the person who's like,
God, I lived my life trying to be obedient to you,
and this person just denied all of it,
and you're just gonna let him in anyways?
That's not fair, that's not just.
Or if there was a judge sitting behind the bench,
and you went into the courtroom,
and you were fully guilty, and they're like,
here's the mountains of evidence, right?
And the judge went, you know what,
I'm just gonna let you go.
We would say that judge isn't just.
We would say that's not justice,
so God had to judge sin because he is just.
It's just Jesus stepped into your place and my place,
and it was his body that was just devastated
through the crucifixion and all that took place there.
And so in communion, when we take this bread,
he wants us to remember this bread.
As he said, look, this is my body.
It's given for you.
He wanted us to remember that he stepped into our place
to take the wrath of God.
He took the full wrath of God
and all sin and unrighteousness.
He took the full judgment of God upon himself.
The judgment that we're gonna see in the future
during the tribulation, but right now in this time,
this age of grace, God said, I took it for you
so that you could be forgiven.
So that death penalty that you owed in the courtroom,
I went and I died on the electric chair, so to speak.
I paid it so that the judge can be like,
justice has been served, and I can let you go free.
He says, remember that, remember that.
That's what we do with this bread.
It's a judgment that we deserve for breaking his law.
It's a judgment that should have fell upon us.
It's the judgment that's gonna fall upon the earth
during the tribulation period,
but because he loved you and me so much,
he stepped into our place.
He took it all so that we can obtain salvation now,
so that we could have the hope and the promise of heaven now.
He bled, he suffered, that we might be forgiven
through our confession of faith in Jesus Christ.
And that confession of faith is what led
to our adoption into his family.
It's what led to us being called the children of God
as we opened in worship today.
That we are his, not sufferers of the wrath to come,
but forgiven and free with the promise of heaven.
Hallelujah.
This is the truth.
He is the way to eternal life and nothing else will do.
It's our faith in Jesus and what he did on the cross for us.
Father, we're so grateful to you for what you did for us.
We are so grateful for your death on the cross, Lord.
We are so grateful that you stepped into our place.
Lord, the horrors of the cross,
the horrors of what you went through in your body
as you went through the scourging and the beatings
and the crucifixion, the horror of all of that, it was for us.
We deserve to go through that, not you.
But you stepped into our place because you love us.
God, you stepped in the path of the judgment of sin
because you loved us.
You took it upon yourself because you loved us.
God, we are so thankful and we remember that today, God.
Even as we're studying what's gonna come upon the earth
during the tribulation period, Lord,
we say thank you, God, that you have saved us.
So Lord, thank you.
Thank you for saving us.
Thank you for taking our judgment on yourself.
Let's partake together.
So if you're in the room, again, that thicker tab,
just very carefully pull that back
and this will reveal the juice here in the cup.
In that same moment as Jesus took that bread,
he also, it tells us, took the cup
and he looked at his disciples and he said,
this cup represents the new covenant in my blood.
You see, prior to that, the covenant was you sinned,
you showed up, you made a sacrifice, it got covered,
you went away, you sinned again, you showed up,
you made a sacrifice, it got covered
and there was this perpetual relationship
of my sin isn't gone, my sin isn't dealt with,
I haven't been permanently forgiven,
I'm just temporarily covered
by the blood of a sheep or a goat or whatever.
But he says, look, I've come to establish a new covenant
and he said, do this in remembrance of me
because it wasn't just his body that was broken for us,
he shed his blood
and God's word tells us that it was the shedding of blood
which was required for the remission of sin
and so he was one that was the perfect sacrifice,
the one on the altar of atonement,
the one that paid that price and he wanted us to remember
that as his blood was shed, it washed us clean,
that we were to remember that clean slate,
that unblemished record, that restored fellowship with God
that his shed blood purchased for us
and so when we think that, again,
we're people who didn't deserve that,
we didn't earn it, there was nothing we could do to earn it
but again, God's desire is not wrath for mankind,
his desire is that we would obtain salvation
and so as he paid that price,
as his desire is that all would be saved,
that is why he came and he died and he shed his blood for us
that we would be able to then benefit
from his sacrifice, to benefit from what he did for us
and he really is then our God,
and he really is then our only hope
and the only hope of the entire world
and the only hope of salvation
and salvation only comes through faith in his shed blood
and what he did for us
and that is what we remember in the juice of communion.
It's because we've been cleansed by his shed blood,
it's because we've been forgiven and set free
that we are people who eagerly look forward to his coming.
We don't look forward to the wrath,
we don't expect the wrath to fall upon us,
we look forward to being called out of it,
to be people clothed with his robes of righteousness
and as we wait for that return,
as we wait for that call,
as we wait for him to come for us,
we are people then that live
and get the opportunity to live
in expressing our gratitude for him
for the salvation he's given us and how do we do that?
Well by loving him first and foremost,
by living for him, by living in obedience to him
and by telling everybody we can
about the salvation that is available in him.
This is what we remember here in communion
and so Father, we thank you God for your shed blood.
Lord it wasn't just you taking our punishment
but then you washed us clean, you made us spotless,
you clothed us in your righteousness,
you clothed us in your perfection God
and Lord we don't deserve that
but we receive it because it is our only hope
and we're so grateful and we say thank you for it God.
May we be people who live in that spotlessness,
may we be people who choose obedience Lord.
But God we have these moments because we know
that even in living a life of choosing obedience,
sometimes we stumble, sometimes we fall,
sometimes we mess up and God all we need to do
is remember the shed blood that washed us clean
from all sin to come back to that place
of saying thank you God for saving me,
thank you for paying that price.
And so Lord we love you, we thank you,
let's partake together.
Well I pray that God would just richly bless your life
and as we spend the next handful of weeks,
I really have no idea how long,
but as we go through these next chapters
and as we see the devastation that's to come on the earth,
I just pray that it would be a radical fire
for us to go out and to start warning people
about the judgment to come.
You know every single one of us were told by Jesus
about Jesus by someone, somebody handed us a tract,
somebody had a conversation with us,
somebody introduced us to Jesus Christ,
well you are that somebody for someone else.
And so take the opportunity as God gives them to you
to warn people about the judgment to come,
to share with them the hope of salvation,
to tell them both the good news of the gospel
and the bad news right?
The good news is Jesus loves you,
Jesus has saved you, he offers that salvation to you,
you just need to accept it,
the bad news is if you don't,
you're gonna get trampled by the horses,
judgment will come, judgment is coming.
We are the light on the hill,
let's be the ones that are warning people
and sharing with them the way out, amen?
All right, let's worship guys, God bless you.